Records: Bullet found near 2 teens’ bodies came from suspect

INDIANAPOLIS — An unspent bullet found between the bodies of two teenage girls slain in 2017 “had been cycled through” a pistol owned by the suspect in their deaths, according to court documents an Indiana judge ordered released Tuesday.

Court records were sealed last month at the request of the local prosecutor, after Richard Matthew Allen, 50, of Delphi, Indiana, was arrested Oct. 28 and charged with two counts of murder in the killings of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13.

The redacted probable cause affidavit released Tuesday states investigators seized Allen’s .40-caliber pistol during an Oct. 13 search of his home. Testing determined an unspent bullet found within 2 feet of one of the girls’ bodies “had been cycled through” Allen’s pistol.

Investigators determined Allen had purchased that gun in 2001. Allen said in an Oct. 26 interview with police that he had never allowed anyone to borrow the gun, according to the affidavit.

Requests from the public and the media for additional information in the case were granted Tuesday by Allen County Judge Fran Gull’s order. The killings have haunted Delphi, a northwestern Indiana city of about 3,000, where Allen lived and worked at a local CVS store.

Gull wrote that “the public interest is not served by prohibiting access” to the documents and that witnesses’ safety and Allen’s personal information could be protected by redacting some parts of the records.

Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, had filed a brief with the court Nov. 21 urging Gull to unseal the affidavit and charging information that detail the evidence authorities have linking Allen to the killings.

The affidavit says investigators “reviewing prior tips” found Allen had been interviewed by an officer in 2017. At the time, Allen said that on Feb. 13, 2017 — the day the girls went missing — he was walking on a trail when he saw three “females” at a bridge called the Freedom Bridge but did not speak to them. He told the officer that as he walked from that bridge to the Monon High Bridge, an abandoned railroad bridge, he did not see anyone but that he was “watching a stock ticker on his phone as he walked.”

Allen was interviewed again by investigators on Oct. 13 and repeated he had seen three “juvenile girls” during his walk. He said he walked across the Monon High Bridge’s first platform, then walked back, “sat on a bench on the trail…